Mastering UCS: Quick Recap and Live Q&A

Oh, Hello everyone, Welcome to the final session or final webinar of this series that we have. This is the quick recap.00:00A live Q and A segment in which we will be covering a little bit of recap on what we already covered in the series, the technology we covered, the topics we discussed, we will brush through them and we will then move on to the live Q and A.00:20Throughout the session, we will also be having some slider questions to understand you a little better. You can put in your feedback, you can put in what you are using out of things that we covered in the session or put in a little more information about your side so that we can understand a little better what is.00:35They're on your end of environment as well. So this is the mastering Cisco UCS series. This is an expert inside series webinar.00:55We have Tom, myself and the call today. We are part of the customer success team. We will be there throughout the session to help you answer any questions you have. But before we get started, we have this Slido that I was talking about.01:04Please scan the QR code and join Slido. You can go to, if you in case you want to join with mobile, just scan this QR code through Google Lens or any QR scanner and then you can move it right onto the link. In case you want to do it through a PC, you can go to slido.com, use the.01:22Dash UCS code and the passcode for you will be Q and A.01:42Q and A Once you're done with that, we will move on to the next part. We will have a Slido question just after this, which will make us understand a little more on what topic were you most interested in. So that's why we would like you to be there in the Slido and give us your.01:46Responses so that we can understand you a little better. Okay i'll move on to the next slide but you can still get the joining information in the questions itself as well. So you can join from there as well.02:06Okay, so this is the 1st question that we would like to know, which topic from the 1st two sessions was the most relevant to your current priorities? Was it the inter site managed mode and the profiles policies templates that we covered? Was it server profile templates and provisioning workflows?02:23Was it AI and high performance computing infrastructure planning that we shortly covered in 2nd segment. We also covered unified edge fleet management in 2nd segment as well. And as part of that we also had workload versioning and how do you roll out.02:41The different versions if in case you want to make any changes to your workflows, ok? I see a few people they're still evaluating, ok? But there are few more people who are interested in server profile templates and provisioning workflows.03:00The workflows was definitely an interesting topic where we could automate a lot of things. We can orchestrate a lot of things, so good to see a lot of people interested in that, but we also have some people interested in mode and the policies that you can configure, ok?03:16If in case some of you are still joining, please, you can use the QR code or join it from.com and use the dashboard of UCS and the passcode of Q and A or you can join using the QR code that is mentioned as well.03:32Okay, we will skip these questions coming in so that we understand what are you looking forward to or what you are using so that we can tailor our future sessions also accordingly and get an understanding of which will be the most relevant topic for you.03:48Okay, we will move on to now the recap. So this was the 1st session that we had. The 1st session was on 10th of September.04:03This focused on mainly replacing the manual server by server configuration that we need to do and moving into the policy based management. We talked about the different policies, we talked about the templates, the profiles. We started with defining a template. Now when we define the template, we also covered how do you.04:19Create policies within that templates. Now the template is nothing but a golden image of your configuration. You define a template once.04:39You define the policies inside that, you define the pools inside that if needed, and then you have a golden image of your configuration, you derive as many number of profiles out of them as you wish, and you can set those configurations, the similar configuration that you have on any number of servers in one go. So you define the template, you define the policies.04:46Then you derive maybe hundreds of profiles out of it and you assign those profiles to the hundred servers you have. That will ensure that everything you have does not have any configuration drift. It is having HCL compliance, which is another feature that we get on inter site. We get a hardware compatibility list which.05:06That's your hardware?05:26Your hardware, your software and your driver versions and give you whether you are compatible and whether you are within compliance or not. So that was one more thing that we covered. The 3rd and the most interesting part of the 1st session according to me at least was the workflow designer. How do you configure your workflows? How do you, so once we have defined the template one.05:29Once we have defined the policy, we can use them inside a workflow designer. We saw how do you configure a bare metal server and also.05:48Install your operating system on top of that in just one workflow. You just run that workflow and that will do all the configurations for you on that particular server. You can orchestrate that, you can scale that up. So within one click and just giving some information about that particular server, specific configurations, you can just.05:57Run that workflow and get that bare metal servers up and running with an OS installed on top of it. So these were the few things that we covered. We covered a demonstration on the workflow designer itself. How do you configure that? That entire thing was covered. So these were few topics that we covered in the 1st session itself.06:17Then in the next week we had 2nd session. This was more of scaling AI high performance computing and bridging the gap or bringing the DC to the edge. Now this was on 17th of September. This covered 1st the main hardware aspects of the different servers.06:37That we have, whether we talk about AI servers, whether we talk about HPC servers, we covered a few of those servers and what are something that we have recently brought into the picture, those also were covered. Then another new topic that we had was the unified edge. Now this is a three RU solution which is only 18 " deep.06:57As the chassis, so it can be mounted anywhere. It has a rugged from form factor which can be mounted horizontally vertically, you can put it anywhere on your edge. Now these edge locations are not your typical data centers with proper racks where you can mount them. You can just keep it in your.07:17In location, it could be a cafe, it could be any particular location. You just put it there and it starts working. And how does it start working? We also covered that part. How do you configure the workload? How do you define the workload? So once you define your workload, then you can create deployments out of.07:35The definition of work load is just using those blueprints that we talked about. There are those five blueprints as of now depending on which kind of environment you are looking at.07:55Depending on that, you have five different slots within the unified edge itself, you can configure each of those slots as according to your configuration. You can have up to five compute nodes in that. You can configure each of them separately, and you can have different kinds of environment, e.g., a.08:06Those environment ESXi environment differently or a red Hat environment on different servers. You can configure those definitions and then you assign those definitions into a deployment where you configure which server will have what kind of an environment or what kind of deployment. You configure that and that also.08:26Asks you that when do you want this deployment to happen? You configure a maintenance schedule, and once you are set to that and the criteria match that this particular server, this particular sort will be a Windows server, this particular server, this particular sort will be a red Hat server.08:45And the maintenance window is established and that comes up. Those configurations will be pushed in terms of instances and everything will be done right to you. You can do the workload definition and deployment before even you receive your unified edge, you can keep them ready, you can assign them location identifiers.09:02You can assign them path tags. According to that matching, it will push the configurations as soon as the device comes live. And how do you bring the device live? You do not need any technical knowledge for that. You just download the inter site app on your phone. You can use that app and the NFC on your phone.09:22To claim using the NFC tag that is present on top of the unified edge. You claim that it comes up, you assign the path tag or the location ID, and then this particular device gets all the configuration that was already configured within those definitions and deployments and the instance comes up. You can see your world view of all of your unified edges all.09:42So on inter site. All these things we covered, we talked about the fleet management, how do you version the workloads? If you want to make any changes in the configuration, how do you do that? If you want to upgrade the firmware, anything according to that line.10:02And if you want to do a rollback, that also was covered in the demonstration. So this was the recap of 2nd session as well. These are the two sessions that we have had till now. We started from profiles policies, then we went into workload design and then we talk about something that was new in terms of hardware.10:16Everywhere from Cisco and then we talked about unified edge, workload definition, workload deployment and instances. So this.10:36Brings us to the end of the recap section, but we want to understand that, ok, you might have already joined these two sessions. Are you trying out anything in that you learned in the session? It could be anything new that you learned about profiles, policies templates, it could be something that you learned about the work.10:45So designer it could be something that you.11:04Wanted to explore regarding unified. Maybe you have unified environment. Did you try out the workload definition workload deployment, anything that you learned, did you try it out? Okay I see some people mentioned that they're planning to try out soon. Okay, some people already have it in production.11:07That is really nice to see. Good to see that we could help you to get started with the journey or at least help you to think about it and bring it, bring it closer to you. If in case you need any support, you can let us know, but.11:26Okay, we see some people who have not started, but they're interested. That is also good to know. Again, if you have anything that you have tried out, we will have one more question just after this. We would like to know what is that thing that you try it out, but ok you already have in a lab or demo environment that is nice. So we see a lot of different.11:42Options here, ok, a few more people saying that they already have it in production. Okay, and thank you for putting in all the responses. We will now move on to one more small question. Now this question is more of you putting in your.12:02Thoughts you can see what did you try out, whether it was profiles, templates, whether it was a workload designer, whether it was fleet management for unified edge, the workload definition deployment or did you try out even Cisco IT? Yeah, Cisco IQ was one more thing that we covered in.12:18The last segments are just given you a brief overview, if you have tried out Cisco IQ that also you can mention here. This is something that you need to put in chat, so just type out your question your responses here so that you can have an understanding that what you have tried out.12:36Yeah, I see someone is typing. I would like to see more responses to this question so that we understand what is something that you did try out after this, after the 1st few sessions ok.12:56I see someone is still typing. Please bring in your responses so that we understand what is something that you did try out and we can even help you in case you have any challenges with that. We will be there.13:16To help you, even in the survey question that you get after this webinar, you have the option to ask for engagement in which we connect with you one on one and you can let us know whatever challenges you have in implementing any of these or in trying out any of these, we will be.13:36To assist you with that as well. Okay.13:56Just give maybe one more minute if anyone wants to put in something else we'll move on to the next part.14:13Okay, maybe we'll come back to it later or you can also put it in the chat that what did you try out and if you need any help in trying out anything or understanding about something, you can put that in the chat as well. We will try to cover that, ok?14:38I see someone mentioned that they have tried out Cisco IQ, that is really nice to see. It does bring in a lot of analytics, a lot of intelligence to your asset management and your LDOS management, ok? I see one more person mentioning Cisco IQ.14:53That is nice to see. But again, if again you have any challenges in trying out any of these, please feel free to put them in the chat and good to see that two people have already tried out Cisco IQ. We would definitely like to see more people trying out different things. Okay, some more people have tried out templates. Yes, that.15:11Definitely helps a lot in terms of configuration.15:31You do not need to do the configuration again and again for all the different servers. You define the template ones, you define the policies within that and the pools and you can just derive your templates or derive your profiles and assign them to the servers. So yeah, good to see that some people have tried out some things.15:34And ok profiles, that is nice. Okay, we'll now move on to just a short summary of these sessions.15:52So the main takeaway is throughout all these sessions, one thing that we saw was you just describe some things once, whether we talk about templates, whether we talk about profiles, whether we talk about talk about the workloads, you define something once, you version it, and then you can let the platform apply it everywhere else.16:08It can be true for the profiles policies, it can be true for the workflows itself. You define it once and then run it and then it could also be true for the workloads as well for the unified. So anything that you want, you just mention the intent and instructions and you can just reuse it and verify the.16:26That does not have any configuration lift, you can version it, you can.16:46Scale it and you can just do it right from inter site everything that you want. Okay, now that was the entire recap of the segment. One more small question that we have is.16:51What outcome would be most valuable to your team? Yes, these are related to everything that we have covered throughout this session. Is, is it faster server provisioning through profile policies and templates, whether it is.17:06More consistent infrastructure configuration so there is NO configuration drift, whether it is better visibility across your UCS and edge environments through inter site, whether it is easier EI infrastructure planning in terms of servers or anything or is it just safer rollout and roll back across your edge.17:22Sites, ok? I see more people interested about consistent infrastructure configuration is that is definitely a big challenge that we face in the data centers ensuring that every configuration is consistent, that it takes a lot of effort, but inter site helps you to mitigate that issue.17:42You also see faster server provisioning, again that is one more advantage that you get when you're using intersight. Okay, good to see all these responses, but now it is the time that we are all waiting for the Q and A, the questions and answers.18:01Now these will be any questions that you have had throughout the session that we have had, whether it was the 1st segment, whether it was 2nd session, you can bring in your questions here, more than happy to answer them.18:20You can bring in your questions live, you can raise your hand and we will be able to unmute you. You can also put in your questions in the chat and we will be there to answer them. Okay, before.18:39We do that. We also have some questions that were unanswered. Okay, we have one raise up hand from Rittech.18:57I'll just give you the option to unmute. Yep, I think now you can unmute yourself and you can ask. Yeah Hi. Previous session, I have already asked right for that.19:13GPU, configuration we did share a documentation with you over mail right after the session. Did you have a chance to look at that?19:29No, I don't received it. I can send this to you perhaps one more time you can ping us your email address on the chat maybe directly just one on one.19:48And I can resend the mail to you and if you have any other specific questions on that, you can let us know yeah once I see the documents I will ask it.20:04Sure thank you ok If anyone else wants to ask any question you can again raise your hand. We will be there to unmute you.20:19You can also ask your questions in the chat section by the time people come up with the questions that they bring up, we did receive.20:34Few questions that we would like to cover in today's session so that people get responses in case they asked it in the previous sessions and we could not answer them. And some more questions that we received after this sessions as well, so we will just go through them once.20:54So there was this one question where it mentions that we have different standards across sites today. How realistic is it to standardize them using policies?21:13Okay yeah take that question and that's a good question. Thank you for the question from whoever that is. So when you have looked at the sessions that and the team delivered, you might have already seen.21:29Mean the benefit of standardization through policies and profiles. What we do is in most of our customer deployment, when we have a customer deploy, let's say X number of servers, a lot of times it's on a specific workload.21:49It could be, it could be database servers, it could be your VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure systems, and also it could be just VSI, right? Virtual server infrastructure. So in that sense, a lot of these workloads require similar hardware profiles in the.22:07Of the way the server should boot, the way the policies are defined in terms of the storage and also all the other things that goes into the operational and functional part of the server. So in this aspect, Cisco intersight helps helps you provide the.22:27Policies that can help you.22:47Ensure all the functional and the operational parameters are met, and then you can have them into a profile, and you could also have this in template and hence, if it's your ESX or VDI, if it's the VSI, a database, AI workload, you could eventually create your policies once, deployed.22:51Multiple times based on how you'd like to deploy your workloads, right? So this, with the power of inter site, you can not only do this for a data center, but across the data centers based on the way you connect your systems to intercite. So just to again summarize what I just said.23:10Policies help you define your functional aspects of your server, and then your profile and the templates define how your server should behave with the conjunction of the policies that you would like to have them. And then eventually you can also scale this to multiple data centers and hence you can standardize it based on workload.23:29Data center functional and operational requirements and so on and so forth, right? So hence, this is the power, be it the inter site or the underlying systems provide you.23:49Hope that answers if you have further questions, please ask in the, the chat as well as you can raise your hand and unmute as well. Thank you very much for that.24:00We also have this question in the chat. What are the ok we'll come one by one. The 1st question from Tarun was what are the basic needs of our network mainly Cisco dealing switches and Cisco router?24:181st if most have a cyber roam or sophose UCS, I think that that.24:37The dealing switches, so there are a lot of products in terms of the routing and switching you know Cisco makes along with the other products and the solutions because Cisco is an end to end provider of B to B anything that an enterprise requires, we make those products.24:53So in these sessions, we're trying to focus on the unified computing systems and inter site and the correlated solutions such as unified edge and Cisco X series servers, right? Now, your question based on what I see is some.25:13For the switches and routers, so to manage an enterprise, we do have few catalyst switches and we do have side to side routers that's Cisco 8000 routers. Now, these are usually what enterprises our customers use and we have a different tool, Meraki and.25:33Center to manage it. Also in terms of this.25:54Yeah, I need more clarification in terms of the Sophos UCS because UCS is confusing for a lot of our customers because it's it could also mean unified computing system, but it also means unified communication systems, right? Meaning your calling devices, your telephony and those solutions. But this session is focused on the data.25:58Center compute standpoint where Cisco X series nodes, unified edge, inter site orchestration or inter site automation what we renamed, intersite cloud orchestration as is what we're focusing on.26:18But you could replace yeah so Tarun what we can do is so we are a data center team, so the scope of this is a bit different, right? It's a different architecture we're talking about.26:34So what we can do is we'll take your email address and, we will give it to our colleague from the other architecture and then see if they can help you in terms of because it's also related to the sales angle, right? And we are post sales adoption and a consultative team so we can.26:54Probably take your email address, give it to a respective team, and they will get back to you on this.27:14That's ok thank you for responding to all the questions on the chat. Any more questions you can please put into the chat and Asham also mentioned, we'll try to prior.27:20There is some questions that are more related to the session that we already covered so that.27:40It is more relevant to everyone in the call and if in case you have any other questions also, we will definitely try to get back to you with the proper solution. You can just share your email ID and we will get back to you with proper response over.27:44Email as well. But again, in this session we'll try to keep it more focused on the topics that we have already covered in this session. It could be related to policies, profile templates, it could be workflows, workloads, unified edge, anything that you.28:00Heard us talk about or anything that you found out after the session that we covered, you can ask anything about that and we'll try to prioritize that. Okay, now there was a few more questions that were asked in the previous.28:15Segment our previous sessions as well. So there is this question which mentioned, how do I know when a server is NO longer matching the standard configuration? Sure, let me.28:32Take this one as well. So that's a good question again. Thanks for the question. So as I also assume that the question is related to unified edge or it could be other servers too, but either which ways.28:53The, the way to think about this is inter site for unified Edge has a certain benefits in terms of because edge solutions would have a lot of branches and hence you might have in the tune of tens, hundreds or thousands of.29:11Devices. Now how do you manage all of them? And back to your question, how do you look at the deviation, right? Part of if it's a edge solution we're talking about, then we have the blueprints and the workload which in the previous session, which we have already discussed. Now, what we also look at that is.29:32If there is this versioning and hence you can always ensure the standardization is across the locations. And the other part, if it's related to a data center servers or even be it unified edge, we have profiles.29:52That are mapped to your servers, and if it's intersite managed mode, meaning it's completely managed within inter site in terms of the policies and profile, not the ISM or the inter site standalone mode, then what we all also can notify you about is.30:05Somebody went to the outer band of the server and let's say they added a VLAN or they changed a Nick property Intersight is gonna flag that as a deviation, right? You're gonna get an amber light on the, on the amber signal on the profile and it's gonna notify you about the deviation.30:24Now, there are two things that happens here, right? One, automatically you're able to find out of band.30:44You know, user restricted changes that were committed, and then intercite gives you the ability to roll back that to like once you get to view what was the change and also roll back to the golden baseline, right? So this is how in two aspects, be it edge solution, be it the data center solution, we're able to let you know the.30:51Creation and configuration, flag it, and then for you to reference it and also fix it.31:11Hope that answers. Yeah definitely definitely does answer that. Thank you, for that. We have one more interesting question that is we already have UCS running well, I believe that is more of UCS manager based question.31:18Why should we look at inter site managed mode now? Oh yeah, that's a very good question. Thanks for the question and it's a great time to think about this question as well. So if you look at the history of Cisco UCS, we've launched this the product in 2009 and we've been a very stable product in.31:34Terms of the hardware and the software, right? Hardware being your UCS and UCS X series of hardware that we have today.31:54And also the UCS manager is the software that resides in your fabric interconnect, right? And if you are a standalone rack servers, you have CIMC. Now when you think about the evolution, Cisco is investing onto the next platform that is well positioned to manage.32:01The multi data center and also it is re platformed with microservices and the security aspects required in the current age we live in. Now the answer to that is Cisco inter site, right? Now, you might have seen this announcement that Cisco just made a few days back that UCS manager will be end of life.32:21And I think the last support is probably a few years down the lane.32:41Now, why, why are we doing this? Because we would like to always have our customers updated with the architectural benefits and also the functional benefits. Now, there won't be a lot of UCS innovation coming going forward because we've already announced end of life and we want our customers to embrace the newer technology.32:46And where it is well positioned for future needs as well. Now intercite was launched in 2017 and we've seen a decade almost a decade of stable customers having great benefits over our traditional or legacy software that that is UCS manager. So there are two, two answers to those.33:07Question. One, Cisco is moving away from the legacy and re platform and re architecture into intercite. And we've tested this almost for like close to nine and close to ten years now. It's been a great success for many of our customers, a lot of our customers, and we want to ensure.33:26The standardization is with Cisco Intersight rather than having multiple management points. So, my suggestion as well as a call for all of you is to review the end of life announcement, we just made that public for four.three and six.UCS manager.33:44And you still have few years based on which hardware of a model you have. If you're still in M5M6, then definitely in few years you would like to refresh it. When you refresh it, then inter site will be the de facto method of managing those servers.34:02And there are a lot of benefits we bring in with inter site better APIs, better way of handling because we bring in Redfish based architecture to manage a lot of aspects and we bring in a lot of feature sets that UCS could never have and future proof the whole management as well. So it's a long answer, but the ask is you know end of life.34:17Before UCS manager is already announced and please take a look at that documentation and Intersight is the way forward and it's already been stable for ten years, right? It's not something very new, but we've have a very good successful transition into this new age platform with Cisco Intersight.34:37Thank you, Sham, that will definitely elaborate answer and hopefully that will give context to a lot of people on thinking this question because I believe there would be a lot of customers thinking about the same question regarding UCS and inter site.34:58Thank you for your thoughts. Okay, there was one more question in the chat but I have asked for a little more context once we get that probably we can try to answer that. It is more on how can we effectively use AI any reference related document to share with us.35:15Yeah, that's a good question Rajesh I mean, there are, as you know, it's a broader question, right? Because it may not confine to Cisco, but overall, there are a lot of things Rajesh you could leverage from. One is prompt engineering, right? A lot of times.35:35We ask AI questions that might not let the AI give the right output, right? Now, because it all starts with the question, right? Because you're able to interface with the AI. Now, there are a lot of courses offline and in open forums in terms of how do you prompt or ask the right.35:55Into AI, right? Now that itself is gonna.36:15Optimize your tokens and all the other aspects. Now, that's a good place to start, but I'll also pivot to AI within Cisco. Now within the, you might have heard about Cisco Cloud control, which is available in the US and very soon will be in our region as well, APJC region. Now, Cisco cloud.36:19Good control is a product where we have AI.36:38Built natively within and hence, your estate, be it you a partner managing your customer environment or you yourself being the IT department of your business, cloud control is where we give you the AI front in terms of thought process and reasoning, where we could ask the question and.36:42It's gonna effectively query into all of your estate and give you the right analysis and configuration push and optimization, right? So AI within Cisco.37:02And within data center wing of Cisco, cloud control is the way to do it where we give you the chat experience and also the ability to look at a lot of different features, benefits and get that aspect. But in terms of effective use of AI there are, I can probably send some to you Rajesh site but it all starts with prompting the right questions and then how.37:14For you, there's also how big is your question, right? If you give a lot of words, then it's gonna lose the 1st half of it. So there are a lot of best practices in term in terms of that. But also Rajesh, if you're a partner or a, a Cisco if you have a Cisco ID, we also have certain courses in Cisco U where.37:34We have certain modules and lessons to how effectively use AI, I can probably share that to you a post session.37:54Thank you Sham. Okay, we will go back to a few more that we had received how much ok I think this is again a con.38:06One of the previous questions that we already had that is how much effort is usually involved.38:26Moving from UCS manager to inter site managed mode. Got it. Oh, that's a good question. That's a very relevant question as well. So there are two ways to think about it. When I, when I think about inter site managed mode, one is the pair of fabric interconnect running inter site natively, that's one part.38:33I also see this in terms of the standalone servers, right? Be it CE 200 or 800 series when they are added into inter site, now are they just being added into inter site or policy and configuration managed by inter site? So be it the, the X.38:53Nodes or the blade servers with with fabric interconnect or rack servers.39:13Now there are a lot of benefits moving into IMM, right? Which I think you already realized and hence asked this question. Now the key question is how can you move it? Now, when you have a rack server, we make it very simple. When you have a standalone service, all you need to do is import import profiles. Once you do that, it's gonna take a look into all your standalone.39:19Configurations and import it into inter site.39:39And hence going forward, you don't have to necessarily go to the individual IMC or the individual endpoint to configure the servers and everything happens within inter site. Now, we import the profile, but also to ensure the profile match with the hardware, there is a reboot required. So hence, that is the one.39:43Part where you could conveniently reboot the server, that can happen in any of the maintenance window, right? You have a server upgrade or any of the any of those aspects, you can import the standalone servers into intercite, and eventually you can reboot it when you have a maintenance window. Now that finishes the migration into inter site for the standalone servers.40:03For a fabric interconnect based systems, I'm sure you might have attended one of our sessions where Cisco has made it very easy for you to transition from UCS to inter site managed mode.40:23With the transition tool. So we call this as a transition tool, where it's gonna look at everything that you have in your configured UCS estate, be it pools policies, profiles templates, and all the other things, right?40:39And it's gonna help you have a few click fully automated way to migrate your configuration intent into inter site managed mode or inter site, right? Or this could be again beatsass or appliance based on what you have. Now, the tool is gonna facilitate the entire migration and.40:54Terms of the configuration aspects and the operational aspects and a lot of other things that are in and around those things. Now, once it the if the process has to complete, of course, just to another caveat that we would require the reboot of the fabric interconnects and the servers accordingly.41:14And that might be a bit of a downtime and that also can be planned in a way that it can be in a maintenance window that combines with any of your upgrades or any other activity, right? So, just to summarize and make it more simple, for standalone servers and the FI connected systems, it's very simple.41:34For standalone service inter site itself natively gives you the ability to import the policies and then we reboot when we have a maintenance window to complete the transition and for the UCS fabric interconnect systems, we provide you the inter site managed mode transition tool that can help you automate and I mean help.41:54To visualize, automate and migrate into inter site with of course a maintenance activity for the reboot.42:14Hope that answers the question definitely definitely thank you for bringing it up. Okay, we had one more question in which we were asked how do we integrate ACI with intersight?42:22Yeah, I think that's a very good question and there are a lot of benefits that we get in this aspects as well. Now, let me take this question in two parts.42:42Now, as you all know, within Cisco, Nexus dashboard is a very pivotal piece within the data center networking wing of Cisco. Now we have ACI fabrics.42:59That can, up to certain versions can could eventually integrate to intersight. And the benefit of that was helping you proactively do the RMA what Cisco calls it are replace your hardware if required. We also was giving you benefits in terms of minimizing the.43:18Time to troubleshoot, right? Because we have a backend connectivity with the Cisco support or what we famously called a stack.43:38Now, to answer your question, what I would suggest is, right? There is a way to connect ACI with intersight. It's a straightforward process but again depending on the version I'm not sure which version of ACI you are on. But what I would recommend is Nexus dashboard is the important piece to help you operate your ACI.43:45Fabric or any fabric, right? You could have NXOS switches.44:06You could have catalyst switches running VXLAN EVPN. You could have some switches in ISN your side to site connectivity. Now irrespective of what it is, including ACI servers, we could have all of them being managed with Nexus dashboard, right? Because you can have one ACI fabric, but then what about.44:10If you have multiple data centers, right? A multi site architecture. So I'm not sure what is your architecture and what is the version of, ACI, but what I would recommend is.44:30Nexus dashboard is the platform that can help you integrate to inter site more efficiently. Now with the latest version of Nexus dashboard, we're also bringing the capable capability to integrate into your cloud control, which will come in few quarters, in few months to the APJC region.44:40As well. Now.44:59Benefit of adding inter site with the data center network platforms such as Nexus dashboard is where intercite already has the connectivity to cloud control and hence we bring the AI powered capability to manage your data center network is the 1st use case. And 2nd use case is through Nexus dashboard, we will also be able to.45:01To ensure the the integration with the Nexus dashboard is gonna enable enable you to work with Cisco tech or the support system or the support wing much more effectively replace the systems or components more effectively and also importantly.45:21What if ACI? So all of you might have heard of Mitos, which is the AI LLM model that is extremely experienced in exploring vulnerabilities in a software or in a product, right? Now, at the age of post Mitos.45:41Now, when you have ACI integrated to Nexus dashboard, that in turn is integrated to intercite. We're gonna give you ability to send you the alerts for critical vulnerabilities in terms of security or the product functionality, and also Nexus dashboard is gonna help you mitigate them without a reboot to enforce.46:00The EB EBPF policies to ensure that the kernel is not affected, right? So I'm it's, it's a long answer, but what I would ask you to evaluate is, look at Nexus dashboard, we have different form factors to deploy, be it virtual physical or cloud, for depending on what you have what you have.46:20Deployed ACI for and then have ACI managed through Nexus dashboard at least to get critical alert notification and to protect your kernel systems if there is a vulnerability that a lot of the attackers are giving it in a much higher pace and also start looking at a lot of other features that's gonna help you along with intersite intake.46:40Right? That's where it actually gives you a end to end protection into end visibility and also the future road mapping for AI assisted operations, right? But if you connect your ACI to intercite, there'll be very minimal benefits, but I'm gonna I would strongly encourage you to look at Nexus dashboard and then integrate that to intercite, which is a.47:00A two step simple process and then you get a lot of benefits that I talked about. If you're interested to know more about this, do reach us out. You could send your email and we could definitely have a one on one session with you why you should do this and what are the benefits that you would get out of it.47:20I also see a great links and few other added information provided by the chat, so please refer to this as well. Thank you. Thank you, Sham. Okay, I think that kind of brings us to the end of the question that were asked in the previous segments. But again, if you have.47:38Still any more questions, please feel free to raise your hand or put them in the chat.47:58And now as we do that, as you put in more questions in the chat, I would hand the stage for a quick segment to Pratibha so that she can talk a little bit about Cisco IQ.48:04And thank you for putting in the mailer in the chat also pretty well. Over to you. Thank you so much. So folks, if you have missed to ask any question at this point of time or you know you're working on some of the learnings from the sessions and you want to reach out to us later, so please drop us an email on that mailer address and.48:22Rest assured we'll get back to you.48:42With that being said, let me quickly share my screen because I did see, you know, some of you say that you've onboarded on Cisco IQ and you know for the others or even for those who've onboarded what next, right? We'll do a quick bit. I maybe two to 3 min on what IQ is. So.48:45IQ is an agent take AI platform that has been built by Cisco. It's available for any customer with the Cisco contract, so it's, you don't need any additional license. All you have to do is, you know, just log into iQ.cisco.com and create an account.49:05Once you create an account, there are lots of things that come along with it to give you personalized, predictive and proactive insights regarding your Cisco environment. So this could be, you know, let's say inter site e.g. is one or, you know, if you have ACI connected to inter site via an.49:24This dashboard as well. Then you can just claim your inter site and you can, you know, get all the benefits of Cisco IQ. There are three modules here, assets, assessments, and support. There will be more modules down the road regarding you know building resilient networks, how to manage risks and so on. But right.49:44Now you could get a unified view of what are the assets that you have, what are the contracts that cover these assets? Is anything near end of life, end of support? How can you plan towards it? Where are your assets located? If they're in different geographical regions, you can get a view of that. All of that in one place through the assets module that you see here.50:04We also have an assessments module, so that would give you all your field notices, P certs, security hardening best practices or let's say configuration best practices in general. So you could get all of that in one place and let's say you have some devices where Cisco IQ.50:25Is telling, hey, you know, you could harden your security through this recommendation. You could go ahead to your device, fix it, make it more secure, and then come back rerun the assessment, and then it will tell you that, ok, right now this device has been secured from this specific issue.50:44So, the last one is support where you can monitor all your tag cases, your rmas, what is the current status? Is it depending on you? Is it depending on Cisco and so on. But these are just the basic three modules, assets, assessments, and support, but like I said resilient infrastructure services, how to make.51:00Make your environment ready for quantum networking and so on. There are lots more that's lined up along the way and like I said, you don't need to have any physical hardware. You don't need to buy any additional license. I'm sure all of you in this call have some Cisco contract, right? So that is all you need.51:20Go to IQ.cisco.com and create an account. If any of you have been using the CX Cloud from before, the data from CX cloud can be migrated to Cisco IQ. But if not, if you're just getting started, the steps are very simple. The link is just IQ dot.51:40Cisco.com, go there, create an account. If you have contracts associated to your cco ID or cisco ID, then you know you could onboard those contracts and through the contracts you will get visibility into the assets because your contracts are mapped to different assets. But then.52:00That is a static data point because contracts are static, right? But if you want more recommendations on assessments, right? Like security advisories, field notices, P certs, best practices, et cetera. If you want recommendations on that, we need a data point that is more dynamic. So you could, you know, connect your inter site to Cisco.52:20To IQ and through inter site again you will have visibility into your ACI and Nexus dashboard environment, but if you tell me that as of now I have only NXOS switches which are not added to Nexus dashboard or ACI recommendation would be, you know, at least monitor your NX, add your NXOS fabric.52:40To Nexus dashboard and then connect nexus dashboard to inter site. But if not, there's also an option for you to install a VM in your premise. It'll be called as IQ link VM. Now this VM can access your NXOS switches or even any other device, right? Firewalls, and so on, which are not managed by control.53:00It'll pull some information through SSH and SNMP and give you insights that I was just referring to, best practices, security, hardening recommendations, and so on. But it's not just inter site, you can connect Meraki or there are lots of other components that you can connect to IQ, like I said, to give you predict.53:21Proactive, and personalized insights regarding your Cisco environment.53:41So the steps are very simple. Go to IQ.cisco.com and you will have everything to get started there or you could just Google for Cisco IQ getting started guide and everything would be available there for you. I'll also paste the link on the chat if you have any follow up questions, feel free to let me know.53:45Okay for sharing that and again if any questions are there and you are not able to ask it to us currently, please do reach out to ask.54:05Expert insights-CAI under Cisco.com. We will be more than happy to answer them to you and also put a link to IQ, how do you get access to IQ? You can just go to iQ.cisco.com and you can follow the link that is mentioned under it to get started with it.54:22Okay, so thank you for that segment and this ok, we also have the previous EIS recordings link in the chat. If in case you missed out on any segment or you could not attend the segment fully, you can go back to the recordings, watch them and.54:41After you watch the recordings, if you have any questions, again, you can reach out to our mailer and we will be there.55:01To help you with it as well. And yep, of course we have our next expert insight series planned, which is on Nexus dashboard. So please do register on that if you have not done already, the link to that is there on the chat segment. We will be looking.55:07Towards seeing you in that session as well from next week onwards. Now, this brings us to the end of this particular segment and also this particular series. Thank you all for joining us to this call to the previous sessions that we had definitely.55:26Means a lot that you all joined and gave us your time. We look forward to seeing you all in our next series coming next week. Please do register using the link put in the chat and.55:46Also do give us your feedback in the survey that you get just after this meeting that will help us to make this series better in the future and we can look into the feedback that you have so that we can give your.55:59Or give you a better value out of the series. That's about it. Thank you all for joining. We will conclude the session here and looking forward to see you in our future sessions as well. Thank you.56:15